| « April 2010 | MAIN | June 2010 » |
I confess. I am a bookaholic, a bibliophile. New books, old books, it doesn't matter. Turn me loose in a convention hall where the public library is selling off their excess and I'm in heaven for two hours.
In Cincinnati, I discovered a used bookstore that filled several floors of an ancient downtown building. I could have moved in.
I know where the best used bookstore is in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Birmingham, Alabama, and never pass either city without a brief stop-in.
But there is reason to this madness. And it's far more than a nostalgia kick. (There is that too, but it's not the major thing.)
Take the 1943 book I finished today. Purchased for 5 bucks somewhere--I forget where--"They Call It Pacific" is an eyewitness account of the opening days and months of the Second World War by Associated Press reporter Clark Lee.
Reading the book was a delight simply because it was not history. Lee was there, he saw it, he told of the conversations, described the people, and let us feel what he felt.
And like a preacher ought, I received several good sermon illustrations from the book. But more than that, these are "life" illustrations, not just grist for the sermon-making mill.
But first, a little background....
In the late 1930's and early 1940's Lee worked out of Japan. He saw the build-up to war first-hand and was friends with a number of government officials and military officers who later became our hated enemies. He escaped the country in November, 1941, just ahead of Pearl Harbor and full-scale war.
Clark Lee was in the Phillipines when MacArthur was forced to flee and the Japanese captured the country. Along with other leaders, he relocated to the island of Corregidor and went back and forth to Bataan to interview American soldiers who were fighting alongwith the Filipinos. Then, as those last bastions fell, he hopped a boat to Australia. He arrived back in Hawaii six months after Pearl Harbor and described the recovery going on. Then, he was assigned to an aircraft carrier that took part in the fight for Guadalcanal.
The book ends after the first full year of American involvement in WW II. I found it fascinating on several levels, some of them because of illustrations the book provides.
Nothing jerks our prayers out of their "blessed generality" stage like a crisis. The best kind of crisis for that is for a close loved one to get in serious trouble--car wreck, cancer, emergency surgery, that sort of thing.
But a close second is a personal crisis, the kind where someone is making life miserable for you and it's taking all the reserves you can muster to get out of bed in the morning and walk into one more day. You either quit praying altogether, the worst possible choice, or your prayers lose their vain repetitions and meaningless phrases and get down to business.
Yesterday, going through a stack of notes from the 1990s, I found such a prayer of mine, written in the thick of church conflict. It's undated, so there's no way of determining what particular struggle was going on then. We went through so many, the first six or seven years of my 14-year pastorate at the last church we served.
The prayer was written in longhand and filled two pages. It's about as specific as one would want a prayer to be. No more "bless him" and "help her." But on the other hand, it does not call names and I'm glad to report, it's not as harsh as some of the Psalms where David or whoever is praying for the children of his enemies to not live to see that day's sunset.
Here is the prayer, along with a few comments. I send it forth in the hope that some servant of the Lord in the fight of his life may find encouragement to hang tough and be faithful.
In the latter months of World War II, as the Allies were closing in on Germany, the Nazis developed a ruse that worked well for a while.
They would find German soldiers who spoke English well and dress them as Americans. They would arrange for them to be "lost" and to rejoin the Alllied forces as they moved forward. Their task: to infiltrate the American troops and assassinate Generals Eisenhower and Patton.
In time, the good guys developed some tests for exposing the fakes. One German was cut down by the Americans when they saw how he was walking. He was ramrod straight whereas all our troops slouched when they walked.
Another group learned to address the soldier using "pig Latin." If he was stymied by that, he was exposed.
And they developed questions. Two, I recall, were: Who is Betty Grable? and What position did Lou Gehrig play?
The answers were: movie star/pinup girl and first base for the Yankees. It was understood that every GI in the world would know this.
If you have been in the warfare against the forces of righteousness and the enemies of all that is good and holy for any period of time, you have come up against counterfeits and pretenders, fakes and shams.
The question is, how do you tell? And what should we do about them?
When I turned on the computer this morning, there was the question. A friend-at-a-distance from many years back with whom I have reconnected on Facebook--FB is great for that very reason--laid the matter before me:
"Why are you Southern Baptist?"
It did not appear that she has an agenda and she didn't sound angry. She sounded like she wanted my take on this matter.
What I said to her in the brief space which Facebook allows was something like: "I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. The Lord captured me there as a sophomore in college and did such wonderful things in my life in this family of churches, I've never looked back. Its emphasis on fellowship, the Word, and bringing people to Jesus does it for me."
That's pretty much what I said, but what I thought was, "It would take an hour to answer that adequately."
Let's see if I can do it in less than that.
"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have." (I Peter 3:15)
Sometimes you know when your moment is coming but most times you don't.
Later this morning--what started me thinking about all this--I'm to be interviewed for a national Christian radio hookup. Readers of this blog will recall the "Christian Bucket List" from late April and early May. (The list of 50 required five articles over a two week period.) Someone at Moody Radio saw them and asked if they can interview me concerning them.
Far from "condoning" or "enduring" such interviews, I love them. No one who goes into the Lord's work does so hoping to keep their ministry a secret. So, let's do it.
I have no idea what they will ask. But, in preparation, I went back last night and looked over the five articles. And made a little discovery. One item of the fifty is mentioned twice. But this can be edited and corrected, thankfully. One of the blessings of blogging.
For the last week, I've had a post-it note beside my computer: "Monday. Interview. Moody Radio. 10 am. Deb." A reminder to pray for the Father's presence in this and a prompting to be near the home phone at that time.
It's not like this is the first time I've been interviewed, so it's not about my having the jitters. (At this point, anyone else would pause to list some of the radio and TV stations/networks I've done interviews with. But let's pass on that. Suffice it to say there have been several. This is not about me.)
What this is about is the need for a minister or any follower of the Lord Jesus to be prepared for that moment when the microphone is poked in his face and he is asked to account for something important.
I recall an article from a newsmagazine in which a consultant was prepping politicians and Fortune 500 big-shots for their moment in the spotlight, for good or ill. Some of his points have lingered with me to this day.
Then yesterday, seeing the CEO of Massey Energy appearing before a Senate committee on C-Span to explain the deaths of the coal miners a few months back in his West Virginia mine brought it all home.
I expect the CEO of British Petroleum has conferred with consultants on how to come across to the public as believable, confident, and yet contrite at the same time. Admit what you can, explain all you must, but do or say nothing to play into the hands of the lawyers who are lining up to clean out your bank accounts.
Some years back Gene Smith wrote a book about the final years of Woodrow Wilson with the intriguing title, "When the Cheering Stopped."
Smith told how at the end of the First World War, Wilson was the most popular man on the planet. When he and his presidential entourage traveled to Europe for the Versailles Conference, crowds acclaimed him everywhere. He was hotter than the Beatles or Elvis ever were. That enthusiasm lasted about a year.
Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke on October 3, 1919, and was incapacitated for the remaining five years of his life. His party lost in the 1920 elections. And Congress refused to ratify membership in the League of Nations, a cause dear to Wilson's heart.
His star had ascended and flared brightly, then had burned out and fallen to the earth. One wonders what he thought about during all those months in which his mind was working but little else. He had much to regret and surely must have suffered great remorse.
The Second World War, it has often been noted, resulted from the botched up job the Allies did at Versailles and over the next few years. (I'm halfway thinking of inserting an apology here for the extended historical allusion. But hey, this was my major and some of my best college papers dealt with this period in American life! But, back to the subject....)
The question before us is "What does a leader do when he comes to the end, hands the reins to his successor, and goes home? When he/she looks back and thinks of the mistakes made, the people hurt, the jobs left undone, how does one handle this?"
Sean Payton, the Super-Bowl-winning coach of the New Orleans Saints football team, has a book coming out at the end of June. "Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life" will give Payton's take on coming to our city and, particularly following Katrina, rebuilding his team and recapturing the hearts of the WhoDat Nation.
In Friday's Times-Picayune, reporter Mike Triplett provides an advance peek at the book with something Payton did to fire up the team during the week prior to the February 7 championship game in Miami.
I know church members who would rather be called 'conservative' than Christian.
For some, their conservative stance in politics and religion is the very essence of who they are. Even to imply that they might be a liberal is to provoke their wrath and invite their hostility.
This is for those of us who count ourselves the conservatives in American life. Specifically, religious (Christian) conservatives.
Many of us have lost our way. We do not hold to Jesus-Christ principles so much as "someone-else-principles." By "someone else," I refer to the spokesmen for whatever brand of conservatism many among us are following with our hearts and souls. In politics, a few years back, it was Newt Gringrich and Rush Limbaugh. These days it's Tea Party stuff. It's Glenn Beck. It's anti-Obama. Let him brush his teeth and some conservative pops up to harangue him about it. The disastrous oil flow in the Gulf is his fault. Whatever did we do for a whipping boy before he came along!
It's an attitude. And it's mainly 'anti.' It feeds off negativism and has a hard time when its own people are in the White House (or in the seats of power within the denomination). The fact is it's much easier to criticize and harass and march in the streets than to govern. When you are protesting, the issues are clear and you have one task: oppose. But the one governing has to balance all his constituencies, listen to all sides, and seek a consensus.
Well, this is not about politics. It's about bringing our conservatism into the church. And it's about reminding ourselves what it means to be a Jesus-follwer.
"My chief objection (to the Christian faith and the church today) is that ninety-nine percent of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull!"
The critic, Frank Shallard, was a preacher himself, so he knew whereof he spoke.
Except he wasn't speaking for himself. Shallard is a fictional character in the 1927 novel "Elmer Gantry" and, I'm confident, was voicing the views of author Sinclair Lewis himself.
That line, the final sentence in chapter 28, must have elicited a million cheers and "amens" from across the landscape as readers "heard" the renegade preacher voicing their own gripe about the church.
Boring preaching and dull Bible lessons are no recent phenomenon.
However, knowing that tiresome, uninspiring preaching has always been around does not make it any easier to take or to deal with.
You know what the problem is in addressing boring sermons, don't you? That one will be boring in doing it. I've already started, deleted, and restarted this piece for that very reason.
Google "boring sermons" and pull up a chair. The internet has plenty on the subject.
Here is my little contribution to the discussion. I'll try not to bore.
Boredom in anything--whether preaching the revolutionary gospel of Jesus Christ, playing third base for the Yankees or Red Sox, or being married to the most beautiful woman in the world--is part of the human condition.
The human being is constitutionally unable to stay excited all the time. The adrenalin would burn up our nervous system and we would be dead in six months from sheer exhaustion and sleeplessness.
God has created us so that the human brain adapts to every situation. The preacher of the world-shaking gospel settles down into a routine he can live with, the third-baseman grows accustomed to the adulation of the crowds and the television lights and the overflowing bank account, and the fellow married to (insert name of your favorite starlet here) finds that one day is pretty much like the next.
That's why preachers grow lazy, third-basemen drop the ball, and husbands of starlets stray.
But we're talking about the preachers here.
Next Sunday I'm teaching my son's Sunday School class at our church. A couple of days ago, he sent me the teacher's lesson book for these young couples. The subject is "living by a higher standard than the unbelieving world" and the text is Leviticus chapters 17-22.
Yesterday I started reading those chapters and began smiling. Oh, these chapters and I are old friends. Good friends even.
There is a story here, one I gladly tell.
It's a story of persistent, nagging doubt and how God is able to use that doubt to do something extraordinary in the life of the believer who will stay in class.
So, yesterday, after reading the passage from Leviticus, I decided to do something I've not done in 45 years. I went back and re-read the 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel "Elmer Gantry." I found it online by typing in "text of Elmer Gantry." In this world of technological wonders, as a child of 1940, I am constantly being amazed at what's available through the computer. But there it was, the entire book.
I was looking for one specific quote, something Sinclair Lewis has a renegade preacher tell another but which, I wager, was Lewis voicing his own doubts about the Christian faith. Preachers and veteran teachers know what this means when I say that I have quoted this from "Elmer Gantry" all through the years but in time I was quoting my quoting. Eventually one forgets the original text and cites what he remembers he said the last time.
I decided it was about time to go back and see if I'd gotten it right, see what the preacher had actually said. I'm no longer the 25-year-old I was when I first came up against that book and the movie it spawned. It could be I'll see those words differently from the way they hit me as a seminary student.
First, a side note about the movie. Far more of this generation have seen the Burt Lancaster movie "Elmer Gantry," made in 1960, than have read the book. The problem is, the book is like a 6 hour movie, whereas the movie was necessarily much briefer. The movie covers only about 100 pages of the book.
I recommend the book to every preacher I know. It's painful reading, I grant you. However, in many ways, Sinclair Lewis knew what he was talking about. The charlatan who was Elmer Gantry--the one in the novel is far worse than the on-screen version played by Burt Lancaster--exposes the charlatanishness in each of us who would deign to speak for God and lead His flock.
In order to convey the full impact of the renegade preacher's words, I'll need to quote a long passage from the book.
You are about to encounter some of this pastor's and I suspect every pastor's pet peeves. These are comments from church members that irk us, get our goat, try the limits of our patience, drive us up the wall--and a whole bunch of other metaphors for provoking us.
Ready? We'll get right to it....
1) "I'm not being spiritually fed."
2) "I have a right" or "I deserve...."
3) "Lord knows I'm not one to gossip but...."
4) "I've been paying my tithes for years and I think I'm entitled...."
5) "Sorry. I just don't have a gift for that."
6) "Why don't they do something about that?"
7) "The pastor is a dictator."
8) "Before we do that, let's have a word of prayer."
9) "There's no use trying to talk to the preacher. He won't listen to you."
Some years back, Pastor (also Evangelist, Author, and a lot of other things) Jack Taylor wrote a book he titled "Which Being Interpreted Means." His thinking was that, just as Scripture sometimes will give a Hebrew or Aramaic word and then tell the reader what it means, we should do that with a lot of expressions we use around the church. It was all tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.
Since Brother Jack had me illustrate this creative little book, I spent a lot of time with each point, so I remember a number of them.
A friend greets you with, "Hey, I've been praying for you." That, being interpreted, usually means, "I haven't prayed for you at all, but on seeing you just now I sent up a quick 'Lord, bless this brother/sister!'"
Someone at church says, "The Lord just isn't leading me to do that." Which being interpreted means, "There is no way under God's heaven I was planning to do that and nothing you say will ever change my mind!"
(I still see Jack's book available from online book sources in case you're interested in getting a copy.)
So, let's apply the little "Which being interpreted means" rule to the above expressions which I hope to never hear in church again.
Calling the previous article and this one on the Epistle of Jude a "study" would be overstating the case, no doubt. Probably a "treatment" is more like it. Once or twice over lightly.
Those who love the Word will identify with what happened to me. After penning the previous article on Jude, I found that it lingered with me. Several statements in particular would not let me sleep last night. They kept insistig that they deserve more than the light reference we gave them previously.
Let's call this: 5 statements that describe this faith of ours, from Jude's epistle.
1) Ours is a revealed faith. (Jude 3)
"...the faith which was once for all entrusted to the saints."
We did not "get up" this body of beliefs. We did not concoct it, think it up, work it up, knock it together using church councils or schools of prophets. It was given us by the Almighty.
Unless we settle this up front, nothing that follows will make any sense.
In their attack on the Christian faith, some will think they have found the fatal flaw when they point out that "your Bible was written by men; you Christians seem to think it was dropped from Heaven as a finished product."
No one believes that. We cite the Apostle Peter when he says, "Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (II Peter 1:21).
God used human instrumentation. Scriptures are saturated with the fingerprints of its human authors, and far from denying it, we revel in it. We treasure the "warts and all" character of the Bible and the personal references from those used by God to pen it. "I Paul write this greeting in my own hand" (I Corinthians 16:21). "Do your best to get here before winter" (II Timothy 4:21).
2) Ours is a finished faith; it is completed (Jude 3).
Wellington, a local pastor friend, and I were having lunch recently. As I'm wont to do, I asked what he was preaching the following Sunday.
"Jude," he said, "and it's worrying me to death!"
I laughed. "Why?"
He said, "I'm doing a series through some of the shortest--and most overlooked--books of the Bible. I've done Philemon and II and III John, and so, locked myself in to do Jude this Sunday. I'm really having trouble finding a hold on it."
Since I had not read Jude lately, my memory of what that book-of-one-chapter contained was fuzzy, so I had little assistance to offer him. What I said was, "Well, don't try to cover everything in it. As I recall, Jude quotes from the Apocrypha."
Wellington said, "That's what's got me. I don't know what to do with that."
The Apocrypha is the name given to the books between the Old Testament and the New Testament. What's that? There aren't any? Maybe not in your Bible, but your Catholic friends' Bible has them.
Protestants do not consider these little writings as authoritative primarily because the Jews didn't either.
In vs. 9, Jude pulls an illustraton from a small book titled "The Assumption of Moses." Then, in vs. 14 he does the same from the apocryphal book of I Enoch.
Now, referring to these books is not the same as endorsing them. Clearly, the Christian community almost from the first has been in agreement that these do not belong in the New Testament.
I said, "When I get back to the office, I'll read through Jude and let you know if I have anything worth sharing."
A half-hour later, two things happened. One, I e-mailed him my take on Jude. And a few minutes after that, another pastor, Millington, and I were visiting in my office. He said to me, "I spoke at a Bible study luncheon today. Guess what I spoke on--Jude!"
If someone were to give a brief speech as to why you deserve a position of greater acclaim or responsibility or exposure, what would they say? The speaker would highlight the accomplishments of your ministry. And what are those?
What if he asked you in advance to write them out?
This week, a search committee assigned to find the successor to Dr. Morris Chapman who wears the interesting title of "President of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention," gave its recommendation. Dr. Frank Page is their nominee, and will be made official at the annual meeting of our denomination a month from now in Orlando.
In their presentation on Frank Page, the committee hit the highlights of his ministry over these years, specifically from his last church, the First Baptist Church of Taylors, SC. The church runs about 2,300 on typical Sunday mornings, baptized 145 last year, and contributed some $6 mil of which 10% went to denominational missions. That sort of thing. They told of the two years he served as president of our denomination and of the missionary work dear to his heart.
Why did they do that? Why tell what he has recently done when the next assignment is completely unlike any aspect of that? Answer: it's all we have to go on. The best indicator of future work is past production.
Everyone I know likes and respects Frank Page. We expect him to do well, and are blessed to have someone of his caliber in this slot for these days. But for our purposes here, I'm more interested in the way they assessed his ministry's success by listing accomplishments.
What would they have said about you and me?
Would they list the attendance in my church as a sign of my success? The size of the offerings? The mission contributions? The denominational offices I have held? The books I have published? The buildings we've constructed? The mission teams we've sent out?
If so, a lot of us would have come up short. And yet--and this is the point I'd like to drive home--a lot of people who are having a successful Christ-honoring ministry will not have big numbers to post. (Incidentally, Frank Page would hasten to agree with that, for what that's worth.)
The question before us, class, is: How do we go about assessing the success or failure of our ministries?
No one wants to be known by his fears.
"Fear hath torment," says I John 4:18 and it's exactly right.
We naturally resist our fears. Some dedicate their lives to eradicating all evidences of fear. An apparel company made a fortune from a line of clothing with the logo "No Fear." The fact is no one but the most foolhardy is without a certain amount of fear, because it can be a good thing. The fear of injury and death motivates most motorists on the interstate to take few risks. The driver with no fear is usually "under the influence," as we say.
"Do not fear what they fear," reads the NIV on I Peter 3:14. The NASB, the standard in my preaching (as well as among my teachers) for most of my lifetime, makes that "Do not fear their intimidation." And yet the footnote says "intimidation" is literally "fear," which would make it read "Do not fear their fear."
So, there's a little interpretation involved in this. Scholars clearly aren't in agreement whether the Apostle Peter is urging believers to resist the fearmongering tactics of their persecutors or to live by standards different from those around them.
Both are true, of course. Each is a truth of the Kingdom.
But in this context and for our purposes today, I'm opting for the NIV's approach. "Do not fear what they fear." (Hey, it's my blog. I get to decide.)
In our culture, people are far more likely to be known for what they love and enjoy than for what they fear and hate and dislike.
Take the city where I live. New Orleans has devotees around the world, people who love visiting here and miss it intensely when they leave. Ask them what they treasure about this place and you will be inundated by a litany of their loves: the food: certain restaurants or cuisines, po-boys or etoufee or boiled crawfish; the music: this hall or that club, this band or that orchestra or a certain singer; the parks: Woldenberg on the river or City Park or Audubon; the neighborhoods: Uptown or the Garden District or the Quarter; the history: the quaint streets of the Quarter, the treasures of the Cabildo; the museums: the Museum of Art or the World War II Museum; the street cars, the sounds, the accents, the list is endless. And the Saints--how could I leave them out?
It's all about loves, not fears. All who love a city are usually bonded by what they enjoy most.
And yet, when it comes to matters of faith and eternity, there are two kinds of people in the world today.
Only two kinds of people? Yep.
You will know them by their fears.
10. Make your own bucket list.
What would you like to have done before departing this earthly scene for heavenly realms? Build a plane? Jump out of a plane? Fly a plane as the pilot? Or just take a ride on a plane? Put it on your list.
We're all so different, no two people's bucket list will be alike. Some years back, I would have put toward the top of my list to attend the annual meeting of the National Cartoonists Society. These men and women are the heroes, so to speak, of this cartooning business, the best there are, and some are household names in America. I own original cartoons from many of them, drawings they did for their newspaper strips which are now signed, framed, and (mostly) displayed on the walls of my home. In the study where I'm working at this moment, 13 original cartoons are staring down upon me.
I'm past the groupie stage of cartooning, for the most part, so that would no longer be on my list. So, lists vary and they have a way of changing.
Make your own list.
9. Postpone your bucket-kicking event.
I'm not one who believes a day was calendared for your death the moment you arrived on the planet. There seems to be a lot of it's-your-call involved in how long we live and when we die, based on how we take care of ourselves and the risks we take.
To postpone the time of our departure simply means to do a few basic things that should increase the length of our lives:
--eat better. More fresh fruits and veggies, and fewer fries and chips and empty calory-type foods such as cola drinks.
--exercise more. Take walks, do stretching routines, buy some small weights from Wal-Mart or an athletic store and tone up your flesh.
--have a full checkup with your doctor. You'll have to take the initiative with this. If you call your doctor's office and say, "I want a checkup," unless he/she knows you, what you'll get will be fairly worthless. Tell the doctor's nurse you want a) a complete head-to-toe examination, b) blood work, and c) a colonoscopy (if you are 50 or older). If you are female and have not had mammograms as recommended, schedule one of those too.
--ask your doctor or a nutritionist to tell you what vitamins to take each day. In the 1990s, my primary care physician at Ochsner's Foundation Hospital in New Orleans put me on a regimen of vitamins and a baby aspirin each day. She said, "Mr. McKeever, I think we have just prevented a heart attack in you."
--lose some weight. Quit smoking. Laugh more. Get up off the couch, turn off the television (or computer!), and get outside. Go to the park with your children or grandchildren. Toss a frisbee or football. Laugh some more. Enjoy a snow-cone in some weird flavor (they're called snowballs around here).
8. Widen yourself.
For one year, try this: each week visit your local library and spend a minimum of one hour in the periodicals section. This is the sitting area with tables and chairs and with magazines on display. Take down several magazines you have never heard of and flip through them. Read anything that attracts your attention.
If you are a preacher or teacher, always have a notepad handy. I guarantee you are going to run into fascinating articles with information you'll want to remember. And think what fun it will be when you stand before your group and say, "The other day, I was reading an article in Rolling Stone magazine...." Or, Electronics Monthly. Or, Archaeology in Zimbabwe.
You may discover a new career this way. (It's been done, believe me.) And if nothing else, you'll broaden your scope.
The overwhelming proof of the lostness of mankind is that people rarely look up from the humdrum existence of their daily lives to ask, "Where is all this headed? What is out there? Where are we going?"
In a 1965 sermon reprinted in the May 2010 issue of "Decision" magazine, Billy Graham tells of the time when Robert Ingersoll, well-known atheist of the 19th century, was addressing an audience in a small town in New York. The orator forcefully laid out his doubts concerning a future judgement and the reality of hell.
At the conclusion, a drunk stood up in the back of the room, and said through slurred speech, "I sure hope you're right, Brother Bob. I'm counting on that!"
Billy Graham commented, "Modern man does not like to think of God in terms of wrath, anger and judgment. He likes to make God according to his own ideas and give God the characteristics he wants Him to possess. Man wants to remake God to conform to his own wishful thinking, so that he can make himself comfortable in his sins."
That struck a note with me. I had just been reading where someone did just that.
"The Son of Man has come to seek and save those who were lost" (Luke 19:10).
Someone asked Daniel Boone if in all his wilderness travels he had ever been lost. "No," he drawled, "but once I was bewildered for three whole days."
Bewildered in a wilderness. Sounds like the place to do that.
The great difficulty in rescuing the lost--the assignment God's children have been handed by the Lord Jesus--is compounded when the subjects do not realize their dire situation.
How would one go about convincing a lost person he was lost? And why do that in the first place?
Clearly, if one is on-board the damaged Titanic and while scurrying to get off the doomed vessel with as many survivors as possible, he runs into partying passengers without the slightest awareness of their situation, he needs to tell them. He will want to alarm them even, and convince them to take action to save themselves. Whether they will listen is another story.
If we know the hurricane is coming and this neighborhood is about to be destroyed, we will do all in our power to alert the residents.
The days of our lives are finite and this world is doomed. Someone needs to tell the passengers.
In trying to alert the Titanic's guests or the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward the day before Katrina, you would learn far more about the lostness of mankind in a few minutes than in all the years of your life to that point.
Anyone trying to save the lost--whether at sea, in penthouses having the time of their lives, in prisons, or sitting in comfortable pews with hymnals in their laps--is going to run into a number of realities concerning this condition.
Most lost people do not know they are lost. And many do not care.
The corollary to that is that God's people often do not seem to know people are lost either. We get taken in by the impressive house they live in, the expensive clothes they wear, their suave manner, or by their religious ardor. If they are really cool, as celebrities and politicians are cool, we're tempted to give them a pass.
Lost is lost. People without God are in big trouble.
Here are some of the ways we know man is lost.
Last Tuesday morning, TV celeb Julia Louis-Dreyfus received a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Well known--okay, she's famous--as Elaine on "Seinfeld" and starring in the current hit "The New Adventures of Old Christine," Julia had arrived, she thought (as she arrived?).
But then she noticed something. The star had her name misspelled.
Whoever had made the star had her name as "Julia Luis Dreyfus." No hyphen and "Louis" was missing the "o."
Julia called it "a great metaphor for show business. Right when you think you've made it, you get knocked down."
"(It's) how this business works," she laughed.
I read somewhere that the celebrity or his/her supporters have to shell out $10,000 for the privilege of receiving one of those stars. So it's not quite the honor it appears to be. And then they get your name wrong.
It's no fun being humbled, particularly in public.
I've told on these pages how as a new pastor in Charlotte, NC, nearly a quarter of a century ago, I had the church purchase a nice ad to tell the city of our Sunday services (as well as, ahem, our new pastor). We laid it out, the newspaper's people assured us it would be done just as we said, and all was well. The brand-spanking new pastor would be suitably announced and welcomed.
Saturday's paper came and I eagerly turned to the appropriate page. There was our ad. It was indeed attractive. But wait--are my eyes deceiving me? Can this be right?
Underneath my picture, the ad read, "Dr. I. M. Pastor."
I'm not making this up.
It turned out that this was a little in-house joke the advertising department played when laying out an ad. For a banking ad, the line would read, "I. M. Banker," that sort of thing. But they always changed the line before it went to press. Except this time they didn't.
On Sunday, my congregation was not sure what to think. Most had not seen it, and those who had were puzzled. Some said, "Our pastor has this quirky sense of humor." He has that, I suppose, but he also has enough insecurity about himself not to pull such a self-deprecating stunt.
It was a tad funny, a good bit embarrassing, and completely humbling. An inauspicious beginning to what turned out to be the most difficult three years of my life.
I was reminded of the role humility can play by something that happened this week when someone asked a question about Bible prophecy.
A friend and I, both adjunct professors at our local Baptist seminary, were doing one of our favorite things: drinking coffee and talking about students, classes, theology, and such.
He said, "I tell my students there is one huge thing they must understand about human nature: people are stupid."
I laughed, "Could you find some more theologically correct way of putting that?"
He said, "I mean it. Think about it. They can not be counted on to do even the most basic thing in life--look out for their own best interests."
If that's the definition of stupid--working against one's own welfare--then it's hard to argue with my friend.
--The drivers on the interstate around here comprise the alpha and omega of this argument for my money. Watch them risking their future and the lives of their riders for a little more speed, a little better position, a few more thrills. After watching a daredevil scoot in and out of narrow slots in high-speed traffic while endangering everyone around him, we would like to ask that driver, "Friend, was it worth what you risked to gain a little better position on the highway?"
We don't do that, of course. We already know the answer: he wasn't thinking. He was responding to the adrenalin in his system. He was not in control of his thinking. He was acting stupid.
--The daily newspaper in any city in America will furnish all the anecdotal evidence for the self-destructiveness of humanity. A medical doctor loses his license and livelihood and goes to prison for selling prescriptions for controlled substances, all for a little more money. A politician who was making a hundred thousand a year sells his influence for a tiny fraction of that, and ends up losing everything.
Friends who live a few miles west of New Orleans were all abuzz the other night. Helicopters were hovering over their homes. When a woman went out to put her garbage on the curb, a policeman suggested she stay in the house. The next morning, the newspaper announced that cops had arrested three people who had robbed a bank in that area. They had pulled ski masks over their faces, held up the bank, and then sped away. Witnesses called 911 and they were apprehended. They "owned" the loot from the robbery for a few hours; they will pay for that with 20 years of their lives.
--A respected pastor with a long record of service to God and the church "falls in love" with his secretary, a deacon's wife, a counselee, or the church organist. To "fulfill his needs," he breaks the hearts of his wife and chiildren, breaks the trust of thousands who have respected and followed his leadership, and breaks the vows he made to God.
What are you thinking?
"I wasn't thinking," one man told me. "I was stupid."
In listening to such a confession, no hearer delights in the self-destructive behavior of the penitent. For there is one inescapable fact that looms over this entire conversation:
We are all stupid; we have all done self-destructive things. None are faultless.
And that is the saddest thing I know. People are so lost.
(Or maybe we should say, "A Poem Out of Sorts." I'm embarrassed to post this, but perhaps some pastor somewhere will connect with it.)
It's Saturday night and sermon time--
When the brain starts to panic
And fears shift into overdrive.
I've worked on this message all week--
Labored over the text and yes I've
Checked the Hebrew and also the Greek.
You'd think by now I've have it down
To a system, a method, an art,
But here in my study, my brain has shut down.
It's not that I don't know what to do,
It's certainly not a new spot to be in
When the calendar and the clock say a sermon is due.
I've got twenty-eight points and need just three;
Four directions and hardly a clue.
Dear Lord, I could use your simplicity.
What shall I do with all these notes?
Take them into the pulpit?
That would be a joke.
Maybe if I laid them aside
And went on to bed
My subconscious would organize
Everything God has said.
I've heard of preachers who can work all week
With hardly a thought of next Sunday morn,
Then stand and let it flow, organized and neat.
But that's not me, Lord--O that it were!
To stand and proclaim with hardly a stir,
And know that I had delivered life's elixir.
So, back to the study; back on my knees.
Here I am again, Lord; help me please.
Refresh my staleness with Thy heavenly breeze.
And then, Monday morning, I run across
The notes and recall how I tossed
And turned all night through
Worrying, "Lord, what should I do?"
"If anyone is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God...." (John 7:17 NASB)
The big question in every decision for the Jesus-follower is always: "What does He want me to do?"
In fact, it may be the only question. Everything else is secondary and in a sense, irrelevant.
Google "decision-making" and you will come away with a garageful of rules, principles, and considerations: list all the options, decide on the outcomes you want, identify your own wishes, inventory your resources and abilities, consider the practicality of each option, the number of people to be affected by each, the timing of your decision, what your trusted advisors counsel, how this will affect your future, what it will cost, what you will wish you had done a year from now, a hundred years from now, a million years. The list is endless.
Years ago, Billy Graham and his team were trying to find a word to describe salvation but one without a lot of theological baggage. They chose "decision." Their radio program became "The Hour of Decision" and their monthly magazine, "Decision." The concept figured in all his messages: "I'm going to ask you to make a decision tonight...."
And it incurred the wrath of half the Calvinists in the country.
Pastor, scan through these offerings and see if you find anything of use as illustrations for sermons. Or, just as good, perhaps they will spark an idea inside you.
UNREQUITED LOVE
In 1964, a hitchhiker was picked up on the highway and given a ride by an 18- year-old woman. They chatted, she dropped him off, and they each went on their way. Within minutes, the man decided that he was in love with her. I mean, seriously, head over heels, a real goner.
The problem was that he had no way to contact her. She was gone. But he never forgot her.
Thirty-one years later, he came across her name in the newspaper in the obituary of her mother. So he sent her 5 dozen roses--alongwith all the letters he had written her over 31 years.
Thirty-one years of letters.
The police found in his house stacks of Christmas cards and boxes of birthday prsents for every one of those 31 years. Of course, by now she was 48 years old.
I said the police found them, because the woman had him arrested for misdemeanor harassment after he kept hounding her.
That's the thing about love...
a) you love someone and they may not know it. Think of Charlie Brown and the little red-headed girl.
b) you love someone and they do not want it. So the love is not returned.
c) you love someone and they are not worthy.
"God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). We weren't worthy, were we?
"We love Him because He first loved us" (I John 4:19). We return His love when we turn to Christ in salvation.
WHO IS THE GREATEST?
The radio preacher I was listening to told his audience that the greatest orator in the ancient world was Cicero. The second was Julius Caesar. And coming in third was Apollos.
My question is: who decided this? And how did he know?
Since no one living has heard either of them, we honestly have no basis for comparison. And yet, here we have them ranked in order of effectiveness in oratory.
The man of God put this forth as fact, but I think we can agree that he was not the scholar who made this determination. But somebody did.
My problem is pastors who pontificate on matters they have no right or business or background for doing so. He did not cite an authority but laid that line before his audience as accepted fact.
Standing at the pulpit with the eyes of hundreds of people upon you presents a huge temptation for any minister. It can be a heady experience. One has to keep his wits about him and pray constantly for the Lord to "set a guard upon my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips" (Psalm 141:3).